Make the Universe your Companion

This is the last blog with flowers from the Buddhist Garden of Faith.

As with the other faiths, I want to include some poetry from this tradition too.

I have chosen some haiku by Basho, a famous Japanese poet of the 17th century.

He studied Zen Buddhism and spent years as a lay Buddhist monk, wandering the land of Japan as a pilgrim.

These are some of his poems, which I chose because they seemed to express key Buddhist insights:

The beauty and brevity of life.

The importance of being here and now in the midst of the flux of change.

The "sorrowful delight" of the passing glories of nature.

The wisdom of non-attachment to what passes away.

Each haiku is followed by a brief response from me. Maybe you would like to add your own!

A bee

staggers out

of the peony.

What a marvelous example of getting the most out of the moment!

Midfield

Attached to nothing,

the skylark singing.

Perhaps that is the best way for me to keep singing my way through life too.

A petal shower

of mountain roses

and the sound of rapids.

The beauty of life, and as we age, the sound of the rapids at the end of the river of life, ever louder.

How admirable!

To see lightening and not think

life is fleeting.

I was never struck in that way by lightening! What will I do with this one precious, wild life I have to live?

A cicada shell;

it sang itself

utterly away.

That's what I would like to do!

Weathered bones

on my mind,

wind-pierced body.

Such a poignant picture of old age.

More than ever I want to see

in these blossom at dawn

the face of God.

And when I learned to see that face everywhere, always, the Life that gives me will have no end.

Some final wisdom from Basho and the Zen Buddhist tradition:

Make the Universe your companion.

Always bear in mind the true nature of things--

mountains and rivers, trees and grasses,

and humanity,

and enjoy the falling blossoms

and the scattering leaves.